One of the greatest challenges in e-mail fundraising is poor
open rates. The majority of donors who subscribe to e-mail
donor newsletters receive them but never open them. If you
track your open rates, you likely already know that roughly
36% of your subscribers open your e-mails. That means
a whopping 64% of your e-mail appeals and e-mail donor
newsletters either languish in inboxes unread, get deleted
by overzealous index fingers, or never appear in donor
inboxes because spam filters catch them first.
Improve your open rates today using these proven methods.
1. Put yourself in the From line
Put the name of your organization in the From line. Readers
will see immediately that your e-mail is from someone they
trust. Some examples:
From: Amnesty International USA
From: Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
From: MADD Online
If you use an e-mail service provider, such as Constant
Contact or GetActive, do not use them in the From line.
Greenpeace Canada, for example, sends its e-mail donor
newsletter using this From line: .
Your donors and members - and their spam filters - will not
recognize a sender like that, and may inadvertently delete
the valuable e-mail fundraising newsletters they want to
receive from you.
2. Put your reader in the To line
Show your reader who the e-mail newsletter is for by putting
your donor's name and e-mail address in the To line. Don't
leave this line blank. That's what spammers do, and you
don't want to be mistaken for a spammer. I have in my inbox,
for example, an e-mail that looks like this at the top:
From: Ontario March Of Dimes
Subject: Ontario March of Dimes Summer Online Auction
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 10:54:18 -0400
Encoded attachment: image001.jpg
As you can imagine, I thought this e-mail was spam, not a
message from a charity that I respect. It wasn't addressed
to me. And it contained an e-mail attachment. Any e-mail
message from your organization that looks like it is for
nobody in particular or everyone in general will quickly end
up in the trash box.
Another mistake to avoid is putting the sender in the To
line, like this:
From: ABC Charity
Subject: Summer Online Auction
To: info@abc.org
This infuriates many of your donors, and me, too. Your
donors and members, especially if they share a family
computer, need to know who your e-mail is for. And they also
need to know which e-mail address they are subscribed to your
newsletter under. They likely have more than one e-mail
address. Few tasks are as infuriating for donors as asking a
nonprofit organization to be removed from their mailing
list but not being able to tell them which e-mail address of
yours they are using.
If you'd like to see an example of a donor newsletter that
gets all of these things right, review this excellent
example from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, at
www.RaiserSharpe.com/z/madd.htm.
Alan Sharpe is a professional fundraising letter writer, instructor, mentor, author and newsletter publisher. Alan helps nonprofit organizations worldwide to raise funds, build relationships and retain loyal donors using cost-effective, compelling, creative fundraising letters. Receive free tips like this each week by signing up for Alan Sharpe's Fundraising Letter.
By Alan Sharpe